Transcript
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Welcome to the Starlight Pet Talk podcast, where we'll talk about and explore ways to help pet parents and future pet parents learn everything they need to know to have a happy and healthy relationship with their pet.
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So sit up and stay for Starlight Pet Talk rescue, adoption and pet parenting done right.
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If you're a fan of Starlight Pet Talk, you'll love our new line of merchandise.
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We have t-shirts, hoodies and more, all featuring your favorite podcast logos and designs.
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Plus, we're offering a limited number of Starlight outreach and rescue items where a portion of the proceeds go directly to Animal Rescue.
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Our merchandise is the perfect way to show your support for your favorite pet podcast and animal rescue at the same time.
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So what are you waiting for?
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Just visit our website at wwwstarlightpettalkcom to order your merchandise today.
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While I'm waiting for my guests to arrive for the recording of this week's episode, I wanted to show everybody who's watching on video and if you're not watching on video, you need to go check out the video my Tell your Dog I said hi.
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T-shirt that I got from our friends at we Great Dogs.
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If you haven't seen the awesome videos that we Great Dogs does and you haven't seen their great merchandise, you really need to check them out.
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I'll put some information in the show notes, but you can find them anywhere.
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Especially, I see them a lot on TikTok, and they're just doing awesome things with the proceeds from their merchandise.
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So make sure you check them out.
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Welcome to Starlight Pet Talk.
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I'm your host, amy Castro, and, as many of you know, I'm the president of Starlight Outreach and Rescue, which is a 501c3 animal rescue in the Houston, texas area.
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I live on a seven-acre rescue ranch with lots of animals and, with my daughter and a team of great volunteers, we run the day-to-day rescue operations so transporting animals, cleaning and feeding, providing medical care, running to the vet, etc.
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Etc.
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And I'm here to tell you it is a challenge to juggle that and everything else in your life.
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Today, I'd like to introduce you to a fellow animal rescue founder and president who's also taken on this juggling challenge, and I wanted to have her on the show today to learn more about how she got started rescuing and about her path from where she started, when she started her rescue in 2014, to where it is today.
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So Holly Dool is the president of Camo Rescue, which is home-based in Magnolia, texas.
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For those of you who aren't familiar with Texas, it's northwest of Houston and Camo is a rescue that first kind of came on my radar for a couple of reasons.
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Number one, because it's got a really excellent reputation, which, again, as doing this myself, I know you work hard to maintain that and it can be work and also the fact that they've kind of created more of a niche in that they focus their rescue efforts on smaller dogs.
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And in addition to running Camo, holly is also a busy realtor, so she definitely knows this juggling act of a life that we live and has somehow figured out how to make it work.
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So, holly, thank you so much for being here today to share your story.
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Thank you so much.
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So you know, we don't just wake up one morning and decide we're going to start an animal rescue.
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There's usually something that leads up to that.
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So how did you get started rescuing animals?
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People ask me that question all the time and I really I wish I knew the answer as to why.
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So when I was a little kid, when I was four or five years old, I used to check the bulletin board at the grocery stores and the lost and found ads in the newspaper and try to reconnect owners to people that had lost dogs.
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So it goes way, way back.
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I've always rescued animals that just came across my path, but I had a difficult time as an adult going to an animal shelter.
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I was in my late 20s or early 30s before I was ever able to walk into an animal shelter.
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So when my ex has been and I moved to Odessa, texas, I went to the animal shelter, thinking that I would volunteer at the shelter, and the lady behind the counter literally rolled her eyes at me and said we don't need any help.
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And I was like, uh oh, that was kind of my first introduction into a an animal shelter that was run by the police department as opposed to, you know, like a city or a county shelter that was privately funded.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Having volunteered at a city facility for several years, I'm sure we could exchange some very interesting tales about that.
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Yes, so what made you specifically decide to start your own organization, to start camo?
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Okay, so shelters need to practice herd medicine.
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When they have that many animals in their facility, they really need to vaccinate those animals on intake to avoid sickness and that stuff.
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That I've just learned from being in rescue.
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You know I had no clue.
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I started from ground zero.
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I've always had animals, I've always had dogs, I've always had cats.
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I did parrot rescue for 16 years before I started dog rescue.
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I have horses, so I have a general knowledge about animals and disease and quarantine and contamination.
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So once I learned about animal shelters and what happens in animal shelters, I felt compelled.
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I had to help.
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I was like nobody's helping, nobody is here helping.
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So that's when I started my own 501c3, because when I became a nonprofit I didn't have to pay the $51 to get the dogs out of the shelters and that's what I did.
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I got her adopted and vetted, I went back to the shelter and I got another dog and I just kept repeating that and finally it was like I can't afford this.
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I had a little bit of my real estate money set aside to start the rescue and that quickly, you know, depleted itself.
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I'm like there's got to be a better way.
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So that's when I started going to city council meetings and trying to get some changes made there.
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I did make friends with one woman on the city council who was animal friendly, so that's kind of how we got started with cleaning up the shelter.
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They did start vaccinations on intake and they started microchipping the animals.
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Another big problem that I had was that the shelter was only open Monday through Friday from 10 to five and I said I have a really big problem with that because you're only allowing people to adopt animals that basically don't have a job.
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You're cutting out families and people that work nights and weekends.
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You know they can't get in there to adopt a dog.
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Well, they said that they had been open on Saturdays and it didn't work.
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And I'm like I think that's just the kennel manager telling you they don't want to work on Saturday.
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So I said please try it at least every other Saturday.
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So they did.
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They started opening the shelter every other Saturday.
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Of course they saw increased adoption.
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So we got that going.
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Now they are open on weekends.
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And then we did a fundraiser and we asked them, if we did a fundraiser, if the city would match the funds that we raised to get new flooring, because the flooring was terrible and it was holding disease and the air conditioning system needed to be cleaned out, so we raised $22,000.
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And this was all under the rescue.
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It was actually my rescue and a cat rescue that got together and we had a fur ball it was what we called it.
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We sold tickets and we had a silent auction.
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We had a really large turnout.
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I was really happy with it.
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The citizens of Odessa showed up and we raised $22,000 and then the city matched the funds and we used it to resurface the flooring and then to clean out the AC units.
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Yeah, it's interesting your story as far as getting that start in animal control and and the frustrations of, I'm sure, a lot of things beyond what we want to talk about on this on this podcast.
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But you know, just seeing that there's tremendous limitations to what they can and are willing to do and so having that rescue be an offshoot of that to be able to provide support, because that's basically the.
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You know, the same story with how I started starlight outreach and rescue and this you know, one of the reasons it was called outreach was to do the outreach to Local areas.
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You know, not not just the one that I started with, although I would say the first Year or two our rescue was in business.
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The vast majority of the animals that we had in our program were just like you, the little dog that you pull.
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Luckily they were a little more advanced.
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We didn't have to pay to pull animals, but you know, animals that we pulled and fostered from the facility.
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And Then then we, you know, you realize that well, in your case, you moved for us.
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We realized that, no matter what we did, things were not necessarily going to get better at the shelter that we were Affiliated with.
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Yeah, and so you know, at some point you can either continue to bang your head against the wall and Fight an uphill battle against this the staff or management or you can just move aside and and do your own thing and help other Shelters and other organizations that actually want your help.
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So that's kind of that's kind of what we did.
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So you moved to Houston.
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How has it evolved since it's been here?
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Like, I want to talk about this focus on smaller dogs, because there's a rescue for everything.
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Right, I mean, there's horse rescues, there's, but rescue's.
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There's rescues for only certain breeds of dogs, but why specifically small dogs?
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So I actually started out rescuing Rottweilers and there's a Misconception out there that I don't like big dogs or I don't like bully dogs and that's not true and there's a lot of rumors and drama and rescue and the point is that I'm approaching 60 years of age.
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I physically can't handle big dogs anymore.
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You know we had Rottweilers.
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I love them.
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They're great dogs.
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I used to.
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I was a one-man show when I was in Odessa.
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I had a huge shop and we had 35 to 40 dogs.
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I had a mama with the litter of puppies and every.
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You know we had four walk-in closets at the house.
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I had a mama with the litter of puppies in every closet.
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I had a huge shop with kennels in it.
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I had 35 dogs Kind of at a time and I would get them to the vet myself, I would get them to the groomer myself.
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I didn't have any volunteers, I just did it all myself because I was new, I just didn't know people.
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And then when we moved to Houston I didn't have the land.
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You know we were leasing for a year because we we moved during the downturn in our house and Odessa was for sale for a year.
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So we leased for a year and I couldn't build A kennel on the land from that, we were leasing from my horses.
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So I just switched to being foster-based, which took a little bit of time.
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Nobody knew me here.
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I can remember being really frustrated and coming here because I was a nobody.
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Nobody knew who I was.
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So it took a little time to get established.
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And then, you know, I started being able to find fosters.
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You know social media was a great help with that.
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And then I would make posts on next door and be like, hey, I can save this dog at this.
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You know, shelter if I can find a foster.
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And we've slowly built up our foster base To probably a hundred to two hundred fosters, maybe a hundred really active fosters.
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Wow, and I also found jealous.
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I'm jealous, I'm sorry.
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Well it's.
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It takes work, it takes time, it takes a lot of work and fosters it's very they can be, it can be very frustrating because fosters aren't alike.
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You know there are.
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There are really good fosters and there are really bad fosters, and you've kind of got to try to weed out the bad ones and we do a online application and we check out the fosters.
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But another reason why we switched to small dogs was that you know, when I used to do the adoption events, I was doing it myself.
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I would.
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I would load up 12 to 20 dogs every Saturday and Sunday and take them to the pet smart in Midland to get them adopted.
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Well, there, I couldn't do that with big dogs.
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Another problem with big dogs is that everything is at least twice as much money.
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A heartworm treatment for a dog is three to five hundred dollars.
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A heartworm treatment for a dog is three to five hundred dollars.
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A heartworm treatment for a pit bull or a rottweiler is going to be six hundred two thousand dollars.
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They eat twice as much.
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Their vetting is twice as much.
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Their spades and neuters costs more.
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Another thing you know there's a local rescue not too far from us that specializes in bigger dogs.
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They might adopt out a hundred dogs a year and they're just as big as we are and their budget is A fairly comparable to ours.
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They also do cats, but they only adopt out a hundred to a hundred and fifty dogs a year.
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We adopt out about a thousand dogs a year.
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So I'm able to save a whole lot more animals by doing small dogs and we specialize more in, you know, york youth poodle shitsus, the little scruffy fluffies.
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We take euthanasia listed dogs from all over the state of Texas.
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We try to help the smaller shelters, like in the Rio Grande Valley, like Palm Valley and those Smaller shelters.
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We just got some from Westlaco.
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We had a paid transport bring us five dogs last weekend that were Urgent in in the Rio Grande Valley.
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Of course we take youth with euthanasia listed dogs all over Houston, dallas, my vice presidents in Dallas and we have a lot of dogs there also and then we take dogs off the streets, which can be a bit difficult.
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You know we stand for a microchip and we try to find the owner of it.
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Everybody's like, oh, that dog probably has an owner.
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It's like, oh, no, they probably don't.
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People don't realize.
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You know they're dumping French bulldogs, they're dumping Yorkies.
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They're dumping right now our biggest problem is doodles and standard poodles.
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They started Breeding those dogs because there was a huge demand for them and now We've probably taken in 300 standard poodles and doodles over the past six months.
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A lot of those dogs are coming from breeders.
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So one of the biggest challenges we face right now is backyard breeders, and I really would people would stop Buying dogs from breeders and start rescuing.
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You know, stop buying dogs from the side of the road.
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I think the biggest challenge that we're facing and why there are so many unwanted animals right now is because of COVID.
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Everybody adopted a dog during COVID, so nobody went anywhere or nobody did anything.
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So it was great because they were home with their dog.
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But then when people started going back to work, suddenly we had all these dogs that were.
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A lot of them were puppies when they adopted them, so they're very unsocialized.
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You know, nobody went anywhere, so they never socialized these dogs to other people.
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So we have dogs that are aggressive, that weren't crate trained, and people are going back to work now so they're trying to dump these dogs.
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So they're literally dumping them at the shelters or dumping them on the streets or dumping them on rescues.
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We get so many calls from people that have only had the dog a couple of years and then the other thing that happened was that breeders saw the opportunity.
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I call them breeders with a G.
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They saw the opportunity because people were adopting animals, so they really ramped up their breeding during COVID.
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And then what happened?
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A lot of those breeders got stuck with a Whole lot of dogs.
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There's one place right now in particular that was trying to unload 200 dogs on rescues and these were Nice quality dogs but they just overbred.
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During COVID.
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I literally only had room to take 11 of these dogs because we're full.
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We have 200 and we have about 270 dogs on the rescue right now.
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So the breeders are just killing us right now and I really wish we could do something with laws To govern that.
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Yeah, I want to just kind of summarize, because I'm glad that you had said something about.
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You know misconceptions about what your rescue is about and you know, as far as focusing on small dogs and you know, in rescue a lot of times people will question.
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You know they question us when we say we'll take in an animal.
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They question us when we say we won't take in an animal and it's like you know, they question everything.
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They question everything.
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You know when you won't adopt an animal to somebody I just had an argument with a guy on the phone the other day that was, you know, so upset that we wouldn't adopt a kitten to him and it's like go to a shelter and get a kitten, you know.
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But I think what we have to do, especially, as you know, when we're the ones that are running the show, we have to do what works for us to make just whatever dent we can make in the pet overpopulation problem.
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So, I think you know, I think it's super smart that you realize, hey, and that's what we've done here at Starlight Outreach and Rescue.
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I was just telling Holly, before we started the recording, that you know I originally had these grand plans for this giant dog kennel building with, you know, dozens of dogs and 40 and 50 cats and one you know, and this having this big building.
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And then I realized the challenges of getting people to volunteer and try to do all that work every day and realize that at some point you come to a realization in the rescue game for lack of a better term, and it's usually a couple of years into it that you cannot save them all, you cannot do it all.
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And so you start scaling to what you can manage to have an impact.
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And so I think it's so smart that you said, hey, look, you know I'm getting to this age, I'm not wrestling with these big old dogs anymore.
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You know, focus on the smaller ones.
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And what I think is interesting too is just, some people stay very local, like we stay very local, you're reaching out to all over the state of Texas.
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People oftentimes have a misconception like, oh, little dogs are so easy to get adopted and you know, little dogs don't end up in shelters.
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But when you look at the state of Texas and the examples that you gave about the backyard breeders et cetera, you know the overpopulation of all kinds of dogs, including cute little, adorable, fluffy ones that should be flying off the shelves and they're on the euthanasia list.
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So yeah, so you're.
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You know you're serving a need there for those smaller shelters.
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In Houston Maybe there isn't as much of an issue of little tiny dogs and shelters compared to dogs, but there is.
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Yeah but probably more of an issue with the larger dogs, but it still exists and so I think it's awesome and just the fact, like you said, you're able to serve a thousand dogs where somebody that focuses on bigger dogs which you know, there are people that like bigger dogs but it can be harder to find homes for something that's really, really large that you're you know you're saving that many more lives.
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So for all of you out there who have kind of second guessed what a rescue is doing, please try to understand that we're doing what we're doing, what we can do and still survive, you know, mentally, physically, financially and everything else, because we carry a lot of the burden just on our own personal backs.
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So we started off as being purely foster based, although a lot of the animals ended up at my house, just because that's the nature of the beast.
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And then we moved to this seven acre piece of property with an outbuilding and we've converted the garage and still we're relying on fosters in some instances but have struggled to find people to foster dogs, which is why we're now building a small shelter building that'll house at least six dogs.
00:19:36.674 --> 00:19:44.173
But what's your model for lack of a better term as far as how the rescue is structured today from that standpoint.
00:19:44.961 --> 00:19:45.301
Well.
00:19:45.301 --> 00:19:55.500
So we actually built a facility having dogs and foster homes, and not having any backup was so stressful.
00:19:55.500 --> 00:20:01.359
You know, if somebody calls and says, hey, you need to come get this dog right now, you know where are you going to put it.
00:20:01.359 --> 00:20:06.220
You know, the only option being that I run the rescue with my house, and that's stressful.
00:20:06.220 --> 00:20:08.740
I think I have 16 dogs at my house right now.
00:20:08.740 --> 00:20:12.460
I've got a litter of Chihuahua puppies in my master closet.
00:20:12.460 --> 00:20:21.615
I have a bottle fed, a litter of standard poodle puppies that are here, plus my own dogs, plus my foster dogs, so I'm at 15 or 16 dogs.
00:20:21.615 --> 00:20:22.180
So it's a challenge.
00:20:22.180 --> 00:20:24.619
I can't just go pick up a dog and bring it to my house.
00:20:24.619 --> 00:20:25.980
I have little dogs.
00:20:25.980 --> 00:20:27.419
I'm a Yorkie poodle person.
00:20:27.419 --> 00:20:34.318
So if somebody said, you know, hey, I've got the pit bull here and I can't foster it anymore, I can't very well just go bring it back to my house.
00:20:35.541 --> 00:20:44.619
So I actually had a dear, dear friend of mine write me a rather large check a few years ago and handed it to me and said I know you'll do the right thing with it.
00:20:44.619 --> 00:20:49.019
So it took me a little bit of time to kind of figure out what I wanted to do with the money.
00:20:49.019 --> 00:20:56.291
I'd been wanting to build a facility and then two months later COVID hit and I was like, oh gosh, what do we do?
00:20:56.291 --> 00:21:04.976
So, having a background in real estate, I kind of knew what was going to happen, you know, if it got as bad as everybody talked about it getting.
00:21:04.976 --> 00:21:07.920
People were going to lose their homes, people were going to lose their pets.
00:21:07.920 --> 00:21:09.700
They weren't going to have a place to take them.
00:21:09.700 --> 00:21:14.637
So I thought I'm just going to go ahead and at least start with the money that she gave me.
00:21:14.637 --> 00:21:15.180
It was seed money.
00:21:15.180 --> 00:21:19.160
It certainly wouldn't build the whole facility, but it gave me a good start.
00:21:19.160 --> 00:21:28.480
I purchased two acres in Magnolia and it gave me the money to get the plans drawn, lay the foundation and put the cinder walls up.
00:21:28.480 --> 00:21:34.819
And then I thought, if we take 10 years to fundraise to build the rest of it, we'll do it in 10 years.
00:21:34.819 --> 00:21:39.720
We actually ended up being able to fundraise and get the whole facility built in about a year and a half.
00:21:40.845 --> 00:21:43.500
It's a 30 kennel facility with indoor outdoor runs.
00:21:43.500 --> 00:21:44.733
It's totally heated and air conditioned.
00:21:44.733 --> 00:21:46.595
We have a beautiful office.
00:21:46.595 --> 00:21:47.847
We have a groom room.
00:21:47.847 --> 00:21:52.299
We have a meet and greet room where people can come and bring their dogs and meet our dog.
00:21:52.299 --> 00:22:02.460
We have three big, beautiful yards you know outdoor yards for the dogs to play in, and we do doggy you know play groups so that the dogs get some activity.
00:22:02.460 --> 00:22:04.615
We have volunteers that come out and walk the dogs.
00:22:04.615 --> 00:22:14.599
Of course, it didn't exactly work out as planned, because I had hoped to just have the facility and not have to use fosters, but that didn't happen.
00:22:14.599 --> 00:22:16.740
It was like if you build it, they will come.
00:22:16.740 --> 00:22:23.400
We were full within a matter of a week after opening, plus, I still had all my dogs in my foster homes.
00:22:23.400 --> 00:22:27.057
So nothing really changed except for now.
00:22:27.057 --> 00:22:27.579
We just have more dogs.
00:22:27.579 --> 00:22:28.567
So we normally have.
00:22:28.567 --> 00:22:29.938
That's what I'm afraid of.
00:22:29.938 --> 00:22:39.974
Yes, yes, we normally have an average of 250 to 270 dogs in the rescue at any given time.
00:22:40.160 --> 00:22:47.784
And we adopted out 100 dogs last month, so it's not that we're just sitting on dogs.
00:22:47.784 --> 00:22:57.938
You know, people did adoptions slowed way, way down the past four to six months but now that school is back and summer is over we're seeing that adoptions are picking up a little bit.
